Stevie Wonder

In 1972 Stevie Wonder is only twenty-two years old, yet he's already a global star with an impressive string of hits behind him. The former Motown child prodigy has recently set things straight with his mentors, securing without much hesitation his own royalties, and thereby establishing a contractual arrangement granting him total (and well-deserved) creative independence. The first fruits of this new path are the albums "Where I'm Coming From" and "Music Of My Mind", both released in 1971 and both already relatively steeped in what would become the new Wonder sound. Stevie no longer needs anyone, and at Motown's Detroit headquarters the matter has now come to a real turning point. Label boss Berry Gordy is well aware of this, having spent much of the Sixties placing more than one guiding hand alongside the young Michigan talent.

With adolescence now behind him, the time has come for Wonder to fully ride his own wave and unleash his immense artistic potential and extraordinary technical range (he plays piano, guitar, bass, drums, percussion and harmonica with effortless ease), sparing no expense and casting off any stifling stylistic constraints. The soul foundation thus becomes the starting point from which he shapes new signatures, new rhythms, new thrilling melodic ideas. Further expanding this outpouring is his choice to enlist musicians of enormous stature. Among others, Wonder brings in percussionist Daniel Ben Zebulo, bassist Scott Edwards, virtuoso guitarists Ray Parker, Jr. and Jeff Beck, backing vocalists Gloria Barley, Jim Gilstrap and Lani Groves, and saxophonists Trevor Laurence and Dave Sanborn.

However, 1972 isn't only the year musical change reaches a decisive turning point. It's above all the year in which his marriage to his beloved Syreeta Wright - who until then had also co-written several of her husband's songs - comes to an unexpected and devastating end. Wonder is deeply affected. The separation from his wife hits like a bolt from the blue, and the musician seems almost stunned. Yet his inspiration is at its peak, and the new album soon to be released will end up absorbing his shaky moods entirely, in a swirl of passions never extinguished and inner certainties that no distance could ever erase ("You are the apple of my eye/ Forever you'll stay in my heart").

"Talking Book" arrives in record stores worldwide like a new messiah of black music showing the righteous path to its followers. The album is a staggering, unrepeatable shift, marking a distance that is practically light years away from the excessive stasis that defined much of the soul music of the era. Across each of its ten tracks, Wonder blends funk, rock, jazz and r'n'b elements into the original recipe, revealing a new rhythmic awareness capable of moving and stirring the masses like no one had before. The atmosphere is defined by a gorgeous embrace of bongos, basses, keyboards, and inventive touches and effects able to overwhelm body and soul alike. The idea is to compile a true talking book through which the musician can reach and free his own soul (and that of his listeners) from their inner demons - all through harmonies that at times take on an almost celestial quality (the eternal "I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)" is the most shining example of this approach).

Adding further richness to all this fervor is a comforting, fulfilling sense of spirituality, just as unexpected flashes of jazz leave their unmistakable mark (see especially "Lookin' For Another Pure Love", featuring an extraordinary Jeff Beck on lead guitar). A social and political outlook is also wisely expressed in "Big Brother", anti-Nixon enough to cement its contribution to the anti-war cause of those turbulent years.

This is therefore a Wonder trying to distance himself, with all his might, from his own past—both inwardly and musically.

The peak of this extraordinary flight is reached with the worldwide hit “Superstition”. The clavinet following the drums' opening rhythm is a combination of interlocking parts unlike anything else in the history of music. And everything that would later be labelled disco-music towards the end of the Seventies owes more than a little to this track (the Bee Gees' fortunate sound is just one of countless future echoes). It's a magic with few equals in black music broadly understood as such, and one that would dominate dancefloors the world over. The lyrics are also a fierce critique of superstition, portrayed as an evil to be defeated and fled from at full speed.

But the album is first and foremost a wonderful tribute to one's own spirituality and feelings. In this sense, the caressing, lulling pace of “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” is still today a perfect example of dazzling soulful harmony. Likewise, the aching ballads “You And I” and “Blame It On The Sun” (co-written with his ex-wife) became, in those very years, the sonic manifesto for an entire generation of lovers. The following “Maybe Your Baby” simultaneously traces the first signs of an unease sparked by a perverse and cruel abandonment ("I'm feeling down and some kind of lonely/ Cause my baby done left me here /Heart's blazing like a five alarm fire/ And I don't even give a care"), while clavinet and bass merge in unison to create a funky interplay stopped short here and there, before collapsing in the finale into a genuine emotional delirium (the famous line "Maybe your baby done made some other plans" repeated with irreverence and biting sarcasm). At the centre of the record, the liquid, elusive keyboard of “You've Got It Bad Girl” once again signals romantic affronts that are truly impossible to resist ("When you insist on excluding/ The tenderness that's in my kiss/ Then you've got it bad girl, you've got it bad girl").

With the arrival of “Talking Book”, revolution and catchiness have never been so close. A totalizing work that continues to influence black music to this day, and on which Wonder would build the foundations of a glorious path forward that would come to an end just before the arrival of the "terrible" Eighties, a decade in which a certain fatigue would begin to show. His extraordinary success would also be celebrated with a massive tour alongside the Rolling Stones. Other landmark records followed, such as the subsequent “Innervisions” and, a few years later, the celebrated “Songs In The Key Of Life”. These albums confirmed the artistic evolution of a singularly unique talent, still "emulated" today by a large crowd of musicians clearly influenced by the Wonder-esque style (chief among them the excellent Jamiroquai, led by Jason "Jay" Kay).

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14/09/2014